


How the Burnish Got their Groove Back

by Xardogn



Category: Promare (2019)
Genre: Comedy, The Promare Didn't Leave (Promare), This Is STUPID, kind of, slight bad language, stupid pop culture references, they came back, why sneezings is considered a biohazard
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-19
Updated: 2020-06-19
Packaged: 2021-03-04 03:46:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,088
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24807199
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Xardogn/pseuds/Xardogn
Summary: If there was a single brain cell among this group of people, maybe this could've gone better.Or, a normal morning for Burning Rescue despite one important detail.
Relationships: Lio Fotia/Galo Thymos, galo just rly gay, kind of - Relationship
Comments: 7
Kudos: 96





	How the Burnish Got their Groove Back

Galo knew he was an idiot.

It’s one of the first things he announces to everyone, including his boss, legal guardian, coworkers, and former America’s Most Wanted terrorist Lio Fotia. But despite this fact and all evidence to the contrary, Galo was wondering why it took so long for his blazing firefighter soul to realize something was a little bit off with today.

It all started with his arrival at Burning Rescue. After they had saved the world, Mad Burnish technically didn’t need to exist anymore. But, as time would prove, Lio didn’t have anywhere else to go, and where Lio Fotia went, his two generals followed. The legal details were still being worked out, but for now Burning Rescue Squad 3 now had three new members in training, one of which was sitting at the low table in their HQ, fingers folded in front of his face as he stared up at Galo.

“So,” Lio almost purred. “I bet you’re wondering why I called you here today.”

This was the first sign.

“Lio, are those….Bugles on your fingers?”

“And if they are?” As if to punctuate the point, Lio almost delicately bit one of them off his fingers with his teeth, consuming the thing whole. Galo was gay, and these two events were absolutely unrelated to each other.

Lio had no right looking so intimidating with snack food adorning his hands.

Sign # 1 of impending change and disaster: Lio was in a good mood, and actively playful.

He’d been depressed since the Promare left, as hard as he tried to hide it and while Galo really couldn’t get behind the whole ‘setting things on fire’ thing, he expected it probably felt a bit lonely without it. He was doing what he could to reignite Lio’s burning soul, starting with and culminating teaching him all the pop culture references he’d missed on his lifelong journey of being as antisocial as possible.

Lucia was actively ~~sabotaging~~ helping in the efforts, and as of today, even provided the Bugle jewelry. “He’s been waiting all morning to do that to you, you know.”

Lio looked less than happy that Lucia had ruined his reputation for being cool, but Galo supposed that its one of the less destructive things the two of them had come up with. “Yeah but I like, work here? So you didn’t call me or anything.”

The tiny man scoffed. “It’s a joke. And I wasn’t waiting for you. You’re just the first one that showed up.”

As if on cue, Varys and Ignis both arrived simultaneously, the situation not yet weird enough for either Galo or Lio to draw any judgemental glances.

Ignis had his coffee and Varys had what looked like several boxes of pastries underneath his arm that Galo was immediately drawn too. Unfortunately, Varys was also the only one with enough height to be able to hold them up in the air so Galo was unable to reach.

“They’re for everyone, rookie. I’m not lettin’ you scarf down the whole box for yourself!” He shouted, pushing down on Galo’s head.

Goddammit, they smelled really good. And he wanted one!

“Lucia doesn’t get one either until she goes the fuck to sleep,” Varys continued, drawing an indignant _‘HEY!!_ ’ from the side of the room.

“That’s totally unfair! You realize how many calories it takes for me to maintain this level of awesome?!” Galo was nothing if not stubborn.

Everyone else in Burning Rescue, unfortunately was already equipped to handle this, and he got shoved down into a seat by his coworker. Lio, the unreasonable bastard, just had to flutter his cute baleful puppy eyes, and Varys immediately handed him two.

Him and his stupid long eyelashes and beautiful eyes and perfect innocent face that was absolutely a lie, Galo was there when Lio hustled them all at poker night despite not even knowing the rules. Besides, that was the second weird thing. Lio almost never took treats for himself and they had to almost sit on him to convince him to eat sometimes.

Galo did lean over to stare directly into the not-captivating eyes; he did feel warmer than usual, so maybe he was like….sick. Or something. Whatever convinced him to finally shove some food into his skinny ass.

“Galo, get the fuck out my face,” Lio said, his now Bugle-less hand shoving the head away from his wrongfully earned pastry.

“Lio, did you just swear? At Galo of all people? I’ve never heard you do that before!” Lucia groaned, decidely ignoring she was now on her third consecutive day of no sleep.

“I swear when it’s appropriate, and right now, he is disturbing my breakfast with his antics. Therefore it is necessary,” Lio said, continuing to shove Galo’s face right back into his own skull.

That was finally when signs # 2 and 3 arrived at the HQ in almost a veritable explosion of energy.

“-And I’m just sayin’ you have a fundamental misunderstanding of what dirt actually is, Meis!!” Guiera arrived by kicking in the door.

“Inside voices!” Ignis barked, speaking for the first time this morning.

Meis, to his credit at least tried to reign in the volume of his voice as the two stalked into the middle of the room, seemingly also in the middle of an argument. “Yeah, and what’s the whole point, Guiera? Neither of us finished high school and dirt is dirt!”

“SOIL AND DIRT ARE TWO DIFFERENT THINGS!!” Guiera shouted, pressing his forehead against his companion’s. Galo had turned around to gape at the two, which had given Lio plenty of time to stuff his face with the remaining pastries.

“What are you morons arguing about now?” Lucia asked, probably curious as to how she could make it worse.

Meis let out a long breath, brushing some of his long hair behinid an ear. “This idiot is telling me I can’t call the shit in the compost pile dirt. What does it even matter? Dirt is dirt.”

Sign #2: Guiera was literally steaming.

Galo thought that maybe he’d just been out in the sun too much, or he was still tired. Or maybe Guiera was somehow on fire and didn’t know it? Or maybe this was normal for people who got really angry. His own blazing soul was hot enough to do that.

Nailed it.

“Can you-Meis, how can I call you a friend after this-dirt is dirt?? DIRT IS DIRT?! Dirt is just a bunch of rocks and other inorganic stuff mixed together, you can’t grow shit in it. It’s the SOIL. The soil has all the plant-growing things in it!! You can’t just call compost dirt, that’s like calling the Boss-oh hey Boss, lookin’ good-that’s like calling the Boss just the Boss!!!” Guiera yelled, completely ignoring Ignis’ order of inside voices.

“I would never call the Boss just the Boss-“ The two broke off their arguments as Varys came over, handing the two burning hot coffees.

Sign #3: Galo could not tell if it was just from sheer frustration, but neither of them noticed the temperature of the cups that Varys handed over to them with gloves on, both of them downing the liquid inside in one go.

Galo looked back at Lio-maybe he would stop this? Or do something? Notice something was weird? Because he didn’t know what, but SOMETHING was happening here. It’s not normal he could barely get a word in edgewise.

Lio however, didn’t care in the slightest, and was instead lifting Vinny into the air. “Galo, I need your help. I finally saw The Lion King-you know where I’m going with this, don’t you?”

Normally, Galo would absolutely be down with reenacting the circle of life but things were moving a little fast for him right now. “I don’t even have my Matoi-“

“-but what the fuck does it matter anyway? What matters if we call it dirt or soil? It’s just ground!” Meis had continued the argument once both of them had completely consumed the burning coffee.

“I didn’t spend all this time reading Wikipedia at 3 AM for you to disrespect me like this-“ Guiera hissed.

“And I don’t want to hear this from someone who thinks that Normal type Pokemon shouldn’t exist!!”

“Oh don’t get me fuckin’ started-“

“No pokemon is normal-Skitty is literally a cat? What are you supposed to do, make it flying type?”

(It was at this point that Aina had walked in. And as the only person with brain cells in this entire outfit, saw what was happening and immediately left. It was only after everything happened that Galo realized she’d probably seen something the rest of them hadn’t.

Meanwhile, Remi was doing an incredible job blending into the scenery that no one knew he was there. Probably a wise decision.)

Lio looked down from being perched on top of the table at his arguing generals. “This again? Wasn’t blowing up a gas station enough for you?”

Maybe it said something about how incensed they were that they barely even looked guilty when their beloved boss interrupted the argument. “Boss-look, we already apologized for that-“

“I’m sorry, they did what??” Now Varys and Lucia were both taking an active interest in what was going on.

Galo had absolutely no idea what was going on, and while Lio being cute normally handled all of his attention, this seemed like an oppurtunity where he had to be loud. “Now wait just a moment-I can’t just let you walk away after admitting to a fire like that-“

“What are you gonna do, fire boy? Put out a fire that happened a year ago?” Guiera sneered.

“It was his fault anyway. Fucking Fairy type pokemon,” Meis shot back.

“BY MY FIREFIGHTER’S SOUL-“

“Shut up about your soul, the gas station wasn’t doing anyone any good!!! Maybe it deserved to be blown up!!”

“How could you say something like that in front of me-“

“Then tell Meis he’s a-“

Varys was now trying to keep the three of them apart with his massive bulk, Lucia cackling in the background and recording everything. No one could really tell what the argument was about anymore, only that smoke was rising and excuse me, that actually smelled like something burnt.

Maybe it was because he was on the outside, but by the time Ignis decided to step into the clusterfuck happening, he noticed Lio looking a little off.

Galo was too fired up for sign #5 of impending disaster and doom to become apparent: a smoke alarm was going off somewhere.

Because

Sign #5. Lio was on fire.

Galo’s fighting spirit was always pure, always engaged and ready to go, conquering blazes everywhere, if Guiera would just _stop squirming_ , but that wasn’t what he should have been concerned about. He should’ve never taken his eyes off of the Mad Burnish leader.

Lio sneezed.

The station exploded.

It was smoky chaos for a little while, a myriad of alarms going of from both Lucia’s computer and the station itself, proud of having detected a fire right under its very own nose. Coughing, Galo pushed himself up through the haze, blown backwards but alive.

Looking around, most of the Burning Rescue crew faired similarly, lying crumpled along scorch marks that radiated from the table Lio was now standing on. The table that was now ash, with only two soot covered figures standing.

Guiera and Meis had survived perfectly unscathed save for the remnants of table that were scattered all over their clothes. “B-boss…..?”

Everyone was getting up now-except for Ignis who had somehow not only stayed in place, but his sunglasses were completely unharmed-to see the source of the disaster holding Vinny in his hands.

Now that everyone’s focus was on him, Lio had the gall to look slightly guilty.

He sneezed again and everyone flinched, but it was a tiny cute kitten sneeze and all that came out was a little trail of technicolor flames. Galo could see all three of them slowly come to the realization that the flames were now dancing over their skin like at a disco party.

There were always those few seconds after a drastic event happens that the human brain takes to catch up with what reality was showing him. Galo felt that he needed more than just a few second. A whole hour perhaps, or an uninterrupted weekend.

Vinny was fine, by the way. He probably was the only one who was.

“Well shit,” Lio said, looking down at his arms. “I’m on fire.”

**Author's Note:**

> Bonus epilogue: Galo panics and dumps a bunch of that fire retardant goo on Lio.   
> Lio doesn't speak to him for like a week after. 
> 
> I'm almost sorry for this and trying to be funny but   
> you're getting it anyway


End file.
